


Simple Seeing, Without Reflection

by printers_devil



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Bisexuality, Bodyswap, Experimentation, F/F, F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route, Hilda Feels Two New Emotions and Hates Both of Them, Masturbation, Multi, Oral Sex, Polyamory, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Resolved Sexual Tension, Sex Magic, Talking Animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:28:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29124189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/printers_devil/pseuds/printers_devil
Summary: After a visit to Constance, a job offer, and an experimental spell gone very wrong, Hilda and Marianne get bodyswapped. (Then the feelings happen.)Written for Marihilda NSFW Week.
Relationships: Balthazar von Adalbrecht | Balthus von Albrecht/Hilda Valentine Goneril, Hilda Valentine Goneril/Leonie Pinelli, Marianne von Edmund & Constance von Nuvelle, Marianne von Edmund/Hilda Valentine Goneril, Marianne von Edmund/Hilda Valentine Goneril/Leonie Pinelli, Marianne von Edmund/Leonie Pinelli
Comments: 7
Kudos: 24
Collections: Marihilda NSFW Week!





	1. If sight and shape be true

**Author's Note:**

> If this was a kink meme fill, the prompt would have gone a little like: "Hilda and Marianne have always been a little in love with each other, but they've never acted on their feelings, and over the timeskip they hooked up happily with other people. Whoops, they get bodyswapped! Emotions. Porn. Please no cheating or bashing of the side pairings--a poly happy ending would be great! Also, I don't care what the side pairings are, do whatever." This is not a kink meme fill, but, like, spiritually, it is?
> 
> Anyway, this sure got long. Thanks to Ammeh for the readovers and also for the original idea (I had no Hildamari thoughts until she gave me her list), to a certain chat for encouragement, and to the mod(s?) of Marihilda NSFW Week for running it. I suppose this counts for the personality swap AU prompt. As you wish.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hilda and Marianne go shopping.

Marianne had been sent back to Garreg Mach for only two purposes: first, Marianne was to find candidates for a suitable political marriage. A younger son or daughter would do, her adoptive father had said, but they had to be both wealthy and intelligent, and titled, if at all possible. Second, Marianne was to distinguish herself in "young Duke Riegan's little war" thereby sweeping away the last cobwebs of scandal clinging to the Edmund name after Father's swift ascension and Countess Daphnel's swift fall. 

She could hear the words in her adoptive father's voice: she would be Margravine. She had improved herself over the past few years. She was not so hopeless as he'd thought she was. She had to think of the future now.

It was in the service of this secret pride of Marianne's—not being so hopeless after all—that Marianne allowed Hilda to drag her underground for a visit to Abyss. 

_It'll be fun!_ Hilda had said. _We'll go see the fortune teller, we'll get drinks at the tavern, and then we'll visit this_ amazing _little shop! You'll love it, I know you will._

Marianne took comfort from the fact that Hilda's enormous friend, a person of some importance in Abyss, was their escort. Since they'd all returned to Garreg Mach, Balthus attached himself to Hilda like a limpet. In this sense, Balthus was a bit like Lorenz, but with half the brains and about four times the muscle. It made Marianne feel oddly comfortable around him, when once she might have flinched from his loud declarations and boasts.

Abyss was far cleaner than Marianne had expected it to be, and all of the cats she paused to speak to told her they were well-fed and happy, which was what mattered. Their final destination was a seedy little bookshop run by a friend of Balthus's. It had no sign, and consisted of three bookshelves crammed with banned books, a counter, and a lot of magical equipment, most of which looked dangerous at best and very illegal at worst. 

"I'm going to see if she's got anything new," Balthus said, heading for the bookshelf farthest from the door. 

He did not seem as though he spent very much time reading. The first book he pulled off the shelf had a very vulgar woodcut on the cover. This explained everything.

"I just love this place," Hilda said, slinging her arm around Marianne's shoulder as they walked through the racks of equipment. "Coco here is a genius. She invented a spell to turn really cheap leather into quality stuff, it's great." 

Marianne made appropriately impressed noises. Hilda had spent the past five years apprenticing herself to all sorts of tradespeople, and she'd written letters about all her silversmithing and cobbling and millinery. Marianne had spent the past five years learning everything there was to know about Dagda's and Morfis's regulations on exports from Fodlan in order to handle House Edmund's trade interests, which had been far less interesting. Her letters to Hilda had dealt largely with the weather and the von Edmund stables, but Hilda hadn't seemed to mind. 

"I was _trying_ to create a process to definitively reverse aging in humans, but if my research must find its use in vulgar trade, so be it!" said the proprietor from behind her little counter. "Don't be a beast, Hilda, introduce me to your little friend." 

Hilda made the introductions. Coco—Constance von Nuvelle—tapped her fan on the counter. 

"Marianne von Edmund!" Constance said. "Why, Balthus has told me about you. You're from one of those little northern merchant houses—and a white mage of not inconsiderable talent!" She paused, as though expecting Marianne to confirm or deny either of these facts. When Marianne did not, she continued speaking: "I have heard tell of your prowess as a healer, as a friend to beasts... because your house is of such low standing, perhaps you'd like to take employment as my research assistant? House Edmund's fortunes shall rise along with House Nuvelle's!" She lowered her voice conspiratorially. "One must take one's opportunities for advancement where one can." 

Hilda and Balthus both looked very entertained. They might have warned her about... this. Constance sounded as though she sincerely thought she was doing Marianne a favor, and Marianne had the very strong feeling that if she explained that she was to be Margravine Edmund, one of the five ruling lords of the Alliance, it would pass in one of Constance's ears and out the other.

"Um... I'm afraid I'm busy," Marianne said. "With the war. Sorry." 

"Very well, very well," Constance replied haughtily. "Should you reconsider, I regret to inform you that I cannot pay you at all. I hope that won't be a problem. Of course it won't be! Tell me—I am so _interested_ to hear another practitioner's opinions—what do you know about—"

She launched into a brief lecture about about her work with magical transference and the conservation of spell usage under battlefield conditions. 

"I know enough about it," Marianne said, when Constance was finished talking. "Healing is my specialty, and Warp is difficult, but I can move small volumes... I wouldn't try move a human, it's too dangerous. I have had some success with, ah, I've had to improvise in the field, and found that—" 

Emboldened by Constance's interested silence, Marianne went into detail about an accident she'd had with a soldier bleeding out at her feet, and how she'd impulsively used the rudiments of her knowledge of warping objects to shunt the woman's blood back into her body. It had been the Goddess's will that it had worked. 

_"_ As the scion of proud House Nuvelle, I cannot risk my precious life in the field! Better to learn from the accounts of others," said Constance. All her well-meaning condescension had vanished like mist. "Please, do tell me more about your little improvisations." 

This was why Hilda had wanted Marianne to come along, Marianne thought, even as Hilda yawned and drifted away to look at the dirty books with Balthus.

Speaking with Constance about magic was easy, even for Marianne, who still became tongue-tied at the most inconvenient moments. Leonie wasn't any good at magic, and for years she'd nodded sweetly along when Marianne discussed details of technique and form. Lysithea had such a natural gift for magic that it could be difficult to talk to her about it. Constance, however, had a charming, clear way of explaining difficult concepts. It became clear over the course of the conversation that for all that Constance was ridiculous as a person, she was educated, really, really educated, and had even been to the School of Sorcery in Fhirdiad. Marianne had wanted to attend, but Father had insisted on the Officer's Academy. The School of Sorcery let commoners in on scholarship. There would be more eligible young nobles to marry off a worthless, tongue-tied daughter to at Garreg Mach. 

Marianne was not so worthless anymore. She held that fact close to her chest and let it warm her.

"Delightful," said Constance. "Oh, most excellent. Hilda! What an invaluable resource you've brought me. Perhaps you can assist me with a small matter after all. Now, if you'll stand here, in the magical circle"—there was one chalked on the floor, and Marianne stood in it—"and review these calculations for me." She handed Marianne a piece of paper. Marianne had one moment to glance over it before Constance snatched it away. 

Hilda and Balthus were together at the bookshelves snickering about something, but at this, they looked up and paid attention.

"Constance, at least buy a girl a drink before you start experimenting on her," Balthus said. 

"I'm not experimenting _on_ her, I'm experimenting _with_ her," Constance replied. "There is a difference. Hilda, I'll need you, too." 

"Um, wait a second, what is this supposed to do?" Hilda asked. "I'm just here for a gift for Holst." 

"Well! It is experimental _,"_ Constance said. "You're not meant to know what it will do. It should be quite harmless—if it doesn't work, the worst you'll feel is a headache. Now, please stand in the other circle." 

Hilda did so. Neither she nor Balthus looked very surprised or alarmed by any of this, which set Marianne's mind at ease. Hilda wouldn't let Marianne come to any harm, and Hilda loved herself too much to risk her well-being for no reason. The elements in the magical circle at Marianne's feet were mostly legible, but were not arranged according to any principles Marianne understood: she recognized bits of Warp and Luna Λ, and some other spells, too, but that was all. She took a moment to memorize it. It was interesting, but it probably wouldn't do anything at all. 

Constance stood at the halfway point between them and shut her eyes. The circles glowed, and the light that rose from them bent and twisted in a strange, prismatic fashion. 

A piece of equipment somewhere in the shop began chirruping an alarm. Balthus found it and punched it. The noise stopped. 

There was a sudden dull pain behind Marianne's eyes, and she pressed them shut—and then it was over. 

"Is that it?" Balthus said. "Nothing happened." 

"Alas!" Constance replied. "It did not. This is not a failure, but an opportunity. Be not afraid, my good friends; this will only spur me on to new heights of brilliance. I, Constance von Nuvelle, the greatest daughter of House Nuvelle, the greatest black mage Fodlan has ever produced—" 

She kept talking. Marianne opened her eyes to see that, if nothing else, she'd moved to the opposite side of the shop. She looked to where she'd been standing—and saw her own body staring back at her, eyes wide with horror. How strange. Had she left her body?

Then she looked down.

Those were Hilda's breasts, Hilda's tall stockings and expensive boots on her feet. She touched her hair: long and bound up into a tight ponytail. Panic made her knees weak. _Hilda's_ knees. Had Hilda ever panicked in her life? Probably not. 

"And Balthus," Constance was saying, "if you broke that, you'll have to pay for it. I do not care that you have no money—!" 

Hilda, in Marianne's body, said nothing at all. She crossed the shop, took Marianne by her now-muscular arm, and ushered her to the door.

"See ya, Coco," Hilda said in Marianne's voice, and did not wait wait for a response. 

The walk back up to the surface was long, but it passed in a blur. Marianne walked in a daze.

Hilda's body had a smaller reserve of magic than Marianne's—but Hilda was _strong_. Moving felt effortless. This may have had something to do with how little clothing she wore, but the less Marianne thought about how much bosom she had on display, the better. Hilda must have trained this morning, because there was not-unpleasant burn in Marianne's thighs when she walked, and in her arms, too. 

And as she walked, there was no way to avoid feeling a strange sensation between her legs, the way Hilda's underwear moved against her quim as she walked—Hilda was shaven down there. It felt peculiar. The less thought about _that,_ the better, too. 

She would have to look at it at some point, though. She would have to look at all of Hilda's beautiful body, and Hilda would have to look at hers, at her shallow little breasts and her skinny thighs, at her soft belly. 

When they returned to the monastery proper, Hilda led them straight to her room. She slammed the door behind them and leaned against it. 

"This is gonna be _great_ ," Hilda said, grinning.

Marianne had never seen her own face make that expression. It was very attractive. Had she been this attractive the whole time, or was it just the effect of Hilda, who was herself good-looking, inhabiting Marianne's body? She stared uncomprehendingly until Hilda's words sank in. 

"Pardon me," Marianne said, "but did you say—'great'?" 

"Yes! I tell everyone all the time that I'm a delicate maiden, and now I get to actually be one!" 

"We—We need to go back to Constance, or we need figure out how to change ourselves back." 

"Oh, come on," said Hilda. She pushed off the door and put her arms around Marianne's shoulders, beaming down at her. Hilda did this in her own body when she wanted Marianne to do something for her, but now Marianne's face was level with her own chest. That was most likely accidental on Hilda's part. It did feel nice. "Give me two days, and then we can talk to Coco. You know me so well, I'm sure you'll do a great impression of me. Just avoid training. We're not marching any time soon, there's nothing to _do_. Let yourself have some fun!" 

There was always a lot to do at Garreg Mach. This probably did not matter to Hilda. It might be nice to move around in the world for a little while as someone very strong, whom everyone thought was confident and pretty... someone who didn't have a curse burning in her blood. Could Hilda feel the Crest? She couldn't feel Hilda's Crest. 

"All—all right," Marianne said. "Just two days. No more." 

They related their general schedules for the next few days to one another, and then something occurred to Marianne—something very important that she had simply never brought up with Hilda because it had never been the right time. She said, "Before you go, I need to tell you—" 

"Pfft, it's fine! I've got it all down. Don't wear anything ugly, okay?" 

"No, I really need to tell you—" 

"You're the best, Marianne! Bye." 

Hilda left. She'd find it out on her own. Marianne very much hoped that she didn't, though. 

*

It was nice to be tall! The skirts were a little annoying to walk in, and the capelet and surcoat hid the fact that the underdress didn't fit quite right in Marianne's, now Hilda's, shoulders. All the hair was way heavier than it looked, and Hilda could not wait to take it out of all of its braids and coils and do something much cuter with it. So much to do, so little time, especially if she wanted to enjoy these two days. 

She stood in front of the mirror in Marianne's room in a shift, looking Marianne's body over. Marianne's wardrobe was nothing but dresses, gowns, ratty training uniforms and actual battlefield uniforms, and not even the cute ones with the boob windows; the most attractive things she'd found were a bunch of very full split skirts for riding and their accompanying blouses. There was not even one pair of tight trousers that would let Hilda see if Marianne had a nice butt under all these petticoats. 

Wait. There was a solution for that. Hilda got naked, flung the undergarments on the bed, and turned around.

It _was_ a shapely butt. Hilda reached around behind herself and gave it a squeeze. Looked down: Marianne had a big wild bush of hair between her legs. Cute boobs, too, and smaller than her outfit made them look. She passed her hands over them and gave them a squeeze, too. Nice and sensitive. She pinched a nipple— _very_ sensitive. It pebbled up under her touch almost immediately, and she rolled it around between her fingers, pulling her boob out and letting it go. Then she felt a little weird about it, because probably Marianne would be squeezing her eyes shut when she so much as peed in Hilda's body. 

"Okay, enough perving on Marianne," she said aloud to herself. No, she sounded way too brash, Marianne was more whispery. "Enough," she repeated. Still not quite right, but nobody really paid attention to Marianne unless Hilda was making them. That was a shame. Marianne had gotten really funny and charming over the last five years, and she'd developed this a cute little giggle that took almost no effort to coax out if you knew what you were looking for. 

She took all the hair down and gave herself a nice, long braid. Now she had to think of something Marianne-like to do. Pray? Look nervous. Feed some birds. Stare at Claude and Leonie's asses when she thought no one was looking. Go to the stables, do something with a horse. Maybe she'd been a little pushy with Marianne—what _had_ Marianne wanted to tell her?—but it was just a few days. Hilda had left out a few things, too, like just why she hung out with Balthus so much (the sex), and the fact that she was technically on sky patrol until the end of the week (boring, skippable, Marianne didn't know how to handle a wyvern anyway), but those things would shake themselves out. They always did. 

And when Hilda got bored, she'd plant herself on Constance's doorstep and tearfully demand that she fix the two of them. She'd talk about how awful it had been, tell Constance she was a genius and therefore the only one who could help her, and everything would be fine. 

Hilda embarked. 

The stables felt like a good place to start doing Marianne things. Hilda found Marianne's favorite, and its ears swiveled toward her as she walked. 

"I bet she spoils you rotten," Hilda said, running a hand over its soft forehead. 

"She does," the horse replied.

Hilda stared at the horse. 

The horse stared back. 

Marianne just sounded like she was talking when she stopped to let a bird land on her finger and gave it some birdseed out of her pocket. It was adorable. No one thought any more of it than they thought of Raphael's eating habits or Lysithea's tragic declarations that she wasn't long for this world, that she could keel over at any moment, so could you please hurry up in the privy. This was not any more freaky than an experimental spell going wrong and making them switch bodies, Hilda told herself. In fact, its most likely being a weird Crest thing made it substantially _less_ freaky. Marianne was supposed to have one of the rare ones, the less-studied ones—Hilda had heard it was the Crest of Macuil somewhere, sure, whatever. 

"Okay, so, you actually talk?" Hilda said. 

"And you are not my person." The horse tossed its shaggy mane. Marianne had three horses and a pegasus, which one was this—Dorte. The one she'd had back at the academy, right. " _Where_ is my person?" 

"Wait, wait, how do you know that?" 

"Your gait is wrong," Dorte sniffed.

"He's right, you know, you're not doing a very good impression of her at all," a passing barn cat said.

"Well, if you two are so smart," Hilda said to Dorte and the cat, "how can I do it better?" 

"How should I know?" said Dorte, and he repeated: "You are not my person." 

Hilda went a few more rounds with Dorte over this until it became apparent that understanding every animal did not mean that every animal was a great conversationalist. The cat, uninterested in joining the discussion, smugly licked its paw. 

Oh, what did Hilda care what a couple of animals thought! She left the barn, and went through the rest of Marianne's day calmly. She nibbled on a salad in the dining hall to great effect. She let Lorenz dote on her and praise her beauty and elegance in what he probably thought were very oblique terms. She met with one of Margrave Edmund's retainers who'd come to Garreg Mach to relay a message from the Margrave himself, and she had absolutely no idea what the woman was talking about, but she nodded along regardless. In Professor Manuela's special white magic seminar that evening she hurled spells at wooden dummies with an ease and force that had never come naturally to her in her own body. 

It got awkward afterward when a few of the other mages came up to her and started asking complicated questions about sigil rotation, but all Hilda had to do was act sad and a little faint from all the exertion, and all of them fell over themselves to offer her their strongest restorative spells. Marianne was popular with these nerds, apparently. From the way they spoke to her, some of them definitely had designs on being the Margravine's consort. Some of them were even good-looking enough to turn Hilda's head. 

Being a delicate maiden was great. A little less great, it turned out, when she actually _was_ faint, but she waved off her entourage and made her way down the steps from the training ground on her own. 

"Whoa, you okay there?" 

This was Leonie coming out from the baths, looking flushed, a towel draped around her neck. Her red hair was up in a weird little ponytail atop her head, and her clothes clung to her still-damp body. Marianne would look away from, say, the outlines of Leonie's nipples under her thin shirt, so Hilda made herself stare directly at Leonie's face, and no lower. 

"Oh, I'm just a little tired," Hilda said. She made her best sad face, which was not very good, but Marianne's features helped her along. "I had a seminar this evening, I must have overdone it." 

"Aww, come on, I've got something that'll perk you right up," 

Knowing Leonie Pinelli, this was probably "churning butter made of leftover cream scrounged from the dining hall" or "bench-pressing Ignatz." But the sun was going down over the monastery's highest tower, and Hilda was out of things to do for the day. No matter how boring it got up here, it would be way too out of character for Marianne to go to town after dark for a little fun. 

Leonie took her soft hand in her callused one—very boldly, Hilda thought. She'd never seen Leonie be so forward with Marianne. Then again, when Marianne was around, most of Hilda's attention was on making sure everyone made her feel comfortable, 

The moment the door shut, Leonie's arms came around her from behind. 

Hilda jumped about a mile. If Leonie thought she could just feel Marianne up, Hilda was going to turn around and teach her a lesson. A right hook was a right hook no matter who was throwing it. 

"You _are_ tired, huh," Leonie said, pressing her mouth to Hilda's neck and undoing the side hooks that closed Hilda's practice uniform with thoughtless ease. "We haven't gotten a chance to be alone together all week, I missed you." 

"Oh, uh," Hilda replied. 

Leonie's teeth grazed the side of her neck, which saved Hilda from having to come up with a coherent reply.

"I've been thinking about eating your pussy," Leonie went on conversationally. She left off undoing the hooks and slid her hands up Hilda's front, squeezing one of her tits—one of _Marianne's_ tits, Leonie thought she was Marianne—and playing with her nipple through the layers of fabric until it was hard. 

Hilda bit back a whimper. She'd known Marianne was sensitive, but having another person touch her was a different matter entirely. "Uh. Sure?" she said.

Leonie rested her chin on Hilda's shoulder and sighed. "I know you wanted to be discreet when you were living in that awful old mausoleum, but you're out of there. You could sit on my face all night and no one would know. I wanna lick—" 

"I'd like that!" Hilda said. She sounded more shrill than Marianne ever did, but in her defense, Leonie had put that other hand between her legs to fondle her there, too. Apparently Marianne's body was very used to this treatment, because even through layers of clothing that touch was all it took to make Hilda needy and hot. 

She let Leonie get her out of uniform and stood awkwardly in her slip in the middle of the room while Leonie folded it neatly and put it over the back of the desk chair. Habits of discretion, and all that. Sure. When it was squared away, Leonie came forward, took Hilda's face between her palms, and gave her a long, slow, easy kiss. 

Under normal circumstances, Hilda did not have the sternest moral backbone. She'd never seen any reason to develop one. She took her enjoyment wherever and whenever she felt like it and did not feel one bit of guilt afterward: her tastes were pretty pedestrian, and she didn't _hurt_ anyone, not permanently. But this thing with Leonie and Marianne was clearly something that had been going on for a long time. It just wouldn't be right for Hilda to get in the middle of it under false pretenses. 

So when Leonie finished kissing her like she was the only woman who'd ever existed in the entire world, Hilda would speak up, explain the whole thing, and put a stop to this. Leonie finished. Okay, when Leonie was done pushing her down on the bed, she'd say something. Leonie got on her knees. When Leonie was finished kissing and biting her way up Hilda's thighs, _then_ Hilda would say something. All right, all right, a minute or two of getting eaten out, just to see if Leonie could put her money where her mouth was, and Hilda would—

—forget why she'd wanted to stop this in the first place. 

*

Marianne was not a magical theorist. 

She was a good healer who was called upon to work directly on the battlefield, and that meant keeping her skills sharp with both black and white magic, but that did not require any special creativity or ingenuity on her part. Even worse, Hilda wasn't a very skilled mage to begin with, and she did not have enough power in her to sustain the kind of experimentation Marianne needed to do. Magical skill was a habit of the body as much as it was a habit of the mind, and it had to be trained and honed like any muscle. 

What Hilda did have was a lot of actual muscles. She was not like Leonie, who'd come back from five years as a mercenary broad-shouldered, with thick, powerful thighs. (Here Marianne admonished herself to focus. If she started thinking too hard about Leonie's thighs, she would get nothing done.) No: Hilda looked slender until she flexed something, and then you saw all the considerable definition. 

Marianne had caught herself at various points through the day tensing her bicep so she could prod at it. There was one muscle in the thigh in particular that was hard as a rock when prodded, and she caught sight of her calves in a mirror more than once and paused to admire them. To live in a body like this every day, and to want to spend time in Marianne's weak, spindly form... Marianne could not understand it. 

She'd tried to pretend to be Hilda—she really had. It had not gone poorly. She'd scurried back to Hilda's room to find herself something more modest to wear, and to pin Hilda's hair up into a more manageable style. Despite this, people had still given her admiring glances as she'd gone about Hilda's business, of which there had not been much. 

It had certainly been wonderful to speak to people with the knowledge that she could say whatever she liked, and no one would find it strange. Claude had teased her, and Marianne had teased him back. Lorenz spoke to her without any flowery compliments at all, and Lysithea treated her with admiration, rather than with her customary mild disdain.

The sole point of difficulty had been Balthus.

Hilda was beautiful and wealthy. Naturally, she'd have someone to tend to her bodily needs. It was as the Goddess intended. Therefore, Balthus had followed Marianne to Hilda's room like a happy dog, all but wagging his tail, offering to have relations with her. He asked it in a very crude way, but one which reminded her of Leonie when Leonie whispered naughty things into her ear. (Traveling with mercenaries for five years had given Leonie an extensive vocabulary.)

That Marianne had not noticed the nature of his relationship with Hilda only went to show how wrapped up she was with Leonie. Marianne had considered Balthus's enormous hands, Balthus's enormous stature, and the astonishing bulge in the front of Balthus's trousers. She considered how much Leonie would have minded if she'd taken Balthus up on the offer, which was not at all. 

She'd declined politely nonetheless. She could pretend to be someone as self-assured as Hilda in short bursts, but she'd certainly give herself away in the throes of passion. 

And so here Marianne was, sat at Hilda's desk, drawing out what she had remembered from her brief glance down at the spell. She was fairly sure she'd reproduced the spell itself accurately, but the mechanisms here were a bit beyond her level of knowledge. If only Constance had let her see the calculations for longer than a moment! She settled for using small variants of the component sigils to transfer cold tea from one cup to the other in hopes that it would tell her something about the principles on which the spell had been built. All it had done so far was break three of Hilda's very nice teacups and exhaust Hilda's body's reserves. 

Hilda kept no clock, but it was quite late. Marianne was being stubborn about this, but Constance had been so impressively learned, and so impressed with Marianne, too. Marianne could not go back to her empty-handed. Her head felt muzzy. She drank from one of the surviving teacups and stared at her notes, and her own handwriting swam in her vision. 

If Marianne had been in her own body, she might have—well—a short bout of self-satisfaction cleared her mind wonderfully. She couldn't very well subject Hilda's body to that. What started as swift relief sometimes became an hour or more's indulgence. She made herself another cup of tea, this one for drinking. She took a short walk around the room to stretch her limbs, and opened all the windows to feel the cool night air. 

None of this made her any more willing to return to her task. She could not see any way around it. It simply had to be done. 

And so Marianne pulled her skirt up around her thighs, stuck a hand between her legs, apologized to the Goddess for what she was about to do to her friend's body.

Marianne already knew Hilda was clean-shaven down there. Maybe she used magic to do it, because as Marianne ran a finger up the seam of Hilda's lower lips, she felt no stubble. She only had Leonie's quim and her own for comparison. It was strange to the touch, but it was stimulating: the skin was so delicate and fine. She kept her fingers there for a while, rubbing lightly, gathering her courage. 

Hilda's clit was not as sensitive as Marianne's own. Marianne pressed a second finger hard down on it, rubbing herself in long, hard, experimental strokes, and it never became too much. This was a revelation. In due time she discovered that Hilda's cleft became less wet than her own, and Marianne delved a finger down to Hilda's opening to gather some moisture on her fingertips. 

Marianne paused. She was already doing the unforgiveable. She could not possibly put her fingers inside of Hilda, even if they were Hilda's fingers to begin with.

If Leonie was here, she'd laugh so sweetly at Marianne's nerves. Leonie would already have three fingers of her thick fingers inside of Hilda to the knuckle. In her bolder moments, Marianne had whispered in Leonie's ear about bringing other people into their bed—Claude, or Hilda, or even Lorenz—and as she finally passed her index finger over Hilda's clit she imagined Hilda's fist in Leonie's hair. Hilda holding Leonie desperately to her while Marianne told Leonie precisely how to go about the matter of using her mouth on Hilda. Hilda, sitting on Balthus's face, watching Marianne sink slowly down on Balthus's enormous member. 

They _were_ Hilda's fingers. Marianne pressed one finger inside and found precious little resistance, and added a second, then a third. A fourth would fit, but the heel of her palm ground against her clit, and she whimpered. The pleasure Hilda's body felt had a different quality than Marianne's own, slower to build, and, she suspected, more devastating when it peaked. In due time. This was all in service of changing the two of them back. 

With her free hand, she squeezed one of Hilda's breasts. They were as soft and heavy as Marianne had always imagined them to be, and not as tender to the touch as Marianne's were. If Marianne were to give in to the beast inside her and sink her teeth into one of these, how long would it take for Hilda to yelp with pain, Marianne wondered, digging Hilda's long nails into the skin and relishing the hurt. 

Just one climax. She would bring herself to completion, and then she could go back to work. She would not move to the bed. She would remain virtuously in this very uncomfortable chair. 

She did not, in the end, remain virtuously in the chair. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full disclosure: part two of this is just a 5000 word sex scene. Oh, no! (Oh, yes.) 
> 
> You can find your pal PD on Twitter at [@a_printersdevil](https://twitter.com/a_printersdevil).


	2. So well as by reflection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hilda experiences three whole emotions! Hilda hates two of them. The last one is all right, though. (Also, Hilda and Marianne smash.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's a wrap. I considered switching to Marianne's POV at some point in this, but Marianne has grown plenty offscreen, actually! Hilda can be the nervous and insecure one who needs to be reassured, as a treat.

The next morning, Hilda woke up groggy, disoriented, and sore. She tried to shift in bed and knocked the top of her head on her headboard. It was at this point Hilda remembered: she was several inches taller now. She was several inches taller because she was not in her own body, but Marianne's. The person-shaped campfire sleeping half on top of her was Leonie Pinelli, who had fucked her in about five different positions last night, and who had apparently been sleeping with Marianne for at least a few years. At no point had Hilda tried to stop this from happening. She couldn't even blame Marianne's body; it was just her own weakness. 

That about summed it. 

"Hey... Leonie," Hilda said, trying to sound like Marianne probably did in the morning, hoarse and whispery. "Wake up." 

Annoyingly, Leonie was awake and alert as soon as she heard her own name. 

"It's been a while since we slept in a bed together, huh," Leonie mused, stretching until her spine popped. "This beats the gatehouse for sure." 

"Oh, yes," Hilda said. "It was"—she hesitated like Marianne would—"much better." 

She'd thought impure thoughts about Marianne, but she had never gotten as far as fantasizing about waking up next to her. Was Marianne bashful the morning after? Bold? Flirty? Leonie knew a Marianne Hilda couldn't even imagine. 

Lucky, then, that Leonie didn't seem to mind the silence. Leonie kissed her with way too much tongue for this early in the morning, then hopped out of bed fully naked. Hilda lay back down to appreciate Leonie's tight calves, her muscular ass, the lines of her tan, the scratches that stood out against the pale skin of her back. The pillows and the room smelled like the lavender-scented soap Leonie made. There was a batch drying up on the windowsill.

Marianne smelled like lavender a lot, huh.

"You should go back to your own room and get dressed," Leonie said, pulling on a robe. "Unless you want to hit the baths with me?"

Leonie's face was lit up with hope. In her eyes, she'd just taken some kind of big step in her relationship with Marianne. Hilda couldn't bear to let her down, but she also couldn't keep stealing these moments. 

"Um... last night was wonderful," Hilda said, "like always. But I have to meet with my adoptive father's retainers...." 

It was, Hilda thought on the way back up the steps, probably the wrong note to have struck. It was what _she_ would have done if she was sleeping with a commoner she didn't care about and needed to put in their place. But Leonie was lovesick, and there was no reason to believe Marianne didn't feel the same way. As a rule, Hilda tried not to think very much about romance, or feelings, or anything else that was going on north of her bellybutton and south or her neck; but now Hilda found that she was having an emotion, and that emotion was _jealousy_. Whether she was jealous that Marianne got such good sex on a regular basis or jealous that Leonie had gotten to Marianne first was something that she was extremely going to stop thinking about now. 

Instead of going to Marianne's room to find wait an amount of time to avoid Leonie in the baths, she walked into her own. There, she found Marianne asleep face down on her bed, lying atop the covers with the ugliest skirt in Hilda's wardrobe pulled up to mid-thigh. The floor and the walls around the desk were covered in incomprehensible magical diagrams and notes. 

More importantly, she had done something awful to Hilda's perfect hair, and she had not changed out of the clothes she'd worn the day before. Even worse: when she sat up with a start, there were dark circles under her eyes. 

"Oh, hello, Hilda," Marianne said. She grabbed Hilda's pillow and held it in her lap.

"You've been busy," Hilda replied. "Did you at least moisturize before you fell asleep last night?

"No. I mean, yes, I was—I was busy," Marianne said. "There is no guarantee Constance will be able to reverse the spell, so I'd like to get a start on understanding its nature."

"Didn't you go out and have fun?" 

"No... I didn't want to make a mistake pretending to be you." 

Marianne looked awfully shifty. Best case scenario: she'd met up with Balthus and succumbed to his one single charm. Everything would be even and Hilda didn't have to say a thing. That would be perfect. 

Hilda sat down on her bed. Marianne scrambled to press herself up against the headboard, still clutching the pillow, eyes wide and nervous. Then Hilda smelled it: pussy. Her own pussy. From the corner of her eye, she saw a pair of discarded panties on the rug.

Aha.

"Wow, Marianne, you look awfully tired," Hilda said. "Did you sleep okay last night?" 

"Ah, yes, I did," Marianne said. "I stayed up late experimenting. I'm sorry about your tea set...." 

She trailed off, glancing at the desk. Hilda followed her gaze and saw a pile of porcelain shards swept neatly to one side. 

"Pff, that was cheap, I can get another one," Hilda replied. "Are you sure you slept all right?" 

"Please, allow me to buy it—the spell is very complex," Marianne continued. "I was hoping that I could model its effects using water, but there must be something I'm missing? I didn't see all of Constance's math, and I'm not very good at this, but I do know enough to break a spell down into its component parts. I just wish I knew more. The structure is very interesting, it pulls from a lot of very common spells used in battle—" 

She kept droning on. Okay, so Marianne was a better at dissembling than Hilda had given her credit for. A few more minutes of this magic talk, and Hilda's eyes would have glazed right over, and she would have changed the subject just to get Marianne to quit rambling. 

"It's okay if you jerked off in my body, you know," Hilda said. 

Marianne froze. Then she buried her face in her hands. 

"I'm so sorry!" she said. "It was sinful of me—Goddess forgive me, I didn't mean—not so much, at least—"

"You're fine, you're fine!" Hilda said. "I, uh, met up with Leonie last night." 

"Oh." Marianne peeked out from between her fingers. "Yes, I tried to tell you." 

"How long has _that_ been going on? I had no idea!" 

Marianne struggled visibly with her response. Then she spoke: 

"Since the war broke out. Leonie is very kind to me," she said. With that, the words broke free: "We spent a lot of time together in the stables when we were students. She wasn't like any of the commoners I'd ever met; she didn't care that I was going to be Margravine Edmund or make insinuations that I wasn't fit for it. But it's—we're not—Leonie has other lovers! She's been a mercenary and she's spent a lot of time traveling. We couldn't meet very often, and Father wouldn't have approved. Keeping it a secret... it's just habit. It's all right that you—" 

Hilda would not have turned red in this situation. Marianne's body betrayed her. 

"—know about us," Marianne finished. "Did you the two of you, ah...."

The problem with Marianne was that Marianne would believe her if she lied. She would swallow it all and be glad for it. If Hilda was an even worse person, she would have taken advantage of that—and, all right, she had once or twice, or three or four times, maybe five—but that kind of credulity did create a kind of responsibility in Hilda. Ugh. Was this what guilt felt like? This was even worse than jealousy. 

"Yeah," Hilda said. "We did a lot. Well, you did a lot, she thought she was doing it with you? I didn't need to talk much, and her mouth was busy, so I don't _think_ I gave myself away."

Marianne stared at her. In that look Hilda saw an echo of the Margrave, a man who talked circles around Holst and Count Gloucester and poor sweet old Count Ordelia. He always seemed like he was assessing you, like he was weighing what you were worth to him in favors, gold, or blood. It was super creepy. Coming from Marianne-in-Hilda's-body it was less creepy, but it was still not in Hilda's top ten sensations.

"I'm glad you told me the truth," Marianne said at last. "I don't think you could have said no to Leonie when she, um, commenced." 

"Hey, I can resist temptation! I resist temptation all the time." 

Marianne nodded amiably. 

"Let me make it up to you," Hilda said. 

"You don't need to." 

"Oh, come on. I just spent all night having amazing sex with, I don't know, whatever Leonie is to you." 

"She's my lover," Marianne said, with great solemnity, or at least as much solemnity as Hilda's voice could pull off. 

"Right, cool. Great. And all you got to do was masturbate! It's not fair." 

"Your friend Balthus... he propositioned me." 

"Yeah? Did you take him up on it?" 

"No... I didn't want to make a mistake pretending to be you." 

"Did you _want_ to take him up on it?" 

Marianne considered this. "Is his endowment as large as it seems?"

"It's huge," Hilda replied. 

"Oh. Maybe I should have, then."

"I wouldn't have been mad," Hilda said, leaning forward. "He thinks if he sleeps with me enough times I'll pay his debts off for him, which I'm not going to do, but, like, if he's willing to do all the work in bed, why say no? He's a sweetie, and he's known me since we were kids, and he'd never think to try and romance me, let _alone_ think of marrying me."

Once again, Marianne nodded, the portrait of understanding. Marianne wasn't a judgmental person, and she wasn't a manipulative jerk like Claude, letting the silence drag out to keep Hilda talking.

Hilda kept talking nonetheless. This was guilt again. She missed jealousy and wished it woule come back. 

"I think he knows deep down that I'm not going to make him my kept man, because Holst would get wind of it and be happy for us, and he'd pay off everything Baltie owed and give him an allowance him to keep him out of trouble, _and_ throw his dukely weight around and take care of Baltie's family, and that would be extremely embarrassing for everyone! Holst would go out of his way to be as embarrassing as possible about it. You have no idea."

Marianne did her _I'm not sure how to smile but I'm doing my damnedest to pull it off_ smile, which sure was yet another look that was not great on Hilda's face. "I'm sure I don't," she said softly. "But maybe someone should try to romance you." 

Very slowly, she leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the corner of Hilda's mouth.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Hilda said, putting a hand on Marianne's shoulder, which was her shoulder, which was more muscular and unyielding than she'd expected, somehow. "Was that a line? Were you being smooth? What's Leonie been teaching you?" 

Hastily, Marianne drew back. "I'm sorry if I misunderstood. When you said you'd make it up to me, I thought you meant sex." 

"That's definitely what I meant, I just wasn't expecting you to _go_ for it. My little Marianne's all grown up, sheesh," Hilda said, and let Marianne push her down onto the bed. 

"It's been five years," Marianne said, running her hand up Hilda's flank. "You're different, too."

Impossible. Hilda was just as shallow and lazy as she'd always been. It was a great way to live. Nobody ever expected anything of her, and that was just the way she liked it. 

Hilda sighed. "Are we going to sit here, drink a cup of tea, braid each other's hair, and about how much we've changed as people, or are we going to do this?"

She wriggled out from beneath Marianne to undo the hidden buttons up the side of the training uniform. She chucked it on the floor. The slip she wore beneath it followed suit, until she knelt on the bed in just the one ratty old brasseire Marianne owned—the alternative had been short corsets, which really didn't fit Hilda's lifestyle—and an equally ratty pair of bloomers.

Marianne's nose wrinkled at the sight of her own naked body. 

That wouldn't do. Hilda shed the bra, lay back on the bed, and squeezed one of her tiny boobs. Leonie had gone absolutely wild over them last night, like she'd never touched a pair of tits before. Hilda swore she could have come from Leonie sucking on them alone.

"I wish you wouldn't do that... they're not very nice to look at," Marianne said with a grimace.

"Are you kidding me? They're great. They're so sensitive. I could play with these all day. So could Leonie, apparently. I don't know how you survive it in armor on horseback, I'd die. Anyway, it's your turn," Hilda said. "Come on, I want to feel myself up."

Marianne followed suit, undressing in furtive, efficient motions. Hilda sat back to look at her own body. It wasn't perfection like Holst's, but it'd do. Big boobs, tiny waist, just enough padding around the middle to hide her core strength. Not much in the way of an ass, but clothes could make all kinds of illusions.

There was no sense in wasting time. Hilda was the tall one for the moment, and it was her turn to push Marianne down on the bed. 

Marianne went. When she tried to wind her arms around Hilda's neck, Hilda grabbed her wrists and pinned them to the bed, aware as she did so of how just how feeble her grip was. She had the terrain advantage here, though. She knew exactly what to do with her own body. She ducked her head down and pressed her mouth to Marianne's. 

Marianne's gave in to Hilda's kiss in a way Hilda could never conceive of yielding to anything. Hilda's body wasn't soft: she had worked hard to build muscle without bulk, to be strong without seeming ungainly. Marianne's presence in it made into something pliant and gentle, something Hilda could sink into and lose herself in. Gently, Marianne stroked a hand through Hilda's hair, smoothed that hand down her back, rest at the base of her spine.

This was probably the best kiss of Hilda's life. Leonie had kissed her like this last night—with the same melting intensity, the same complete focus—but it had been different. It had been wrong. Leonie hadn't been kissing _her_.

Jealousy flared up inside Hilda, and arousal, at the thought of the other things Leonie had done and said to her-as-Marianne, all those tender words, all the little jokes Hilda had pretended to understand. Hilda deepened the kiss, drawing Marianne's tongue into her mouth. She would just have to fuck Marianne so good she couldn't think about Leonie at all. Then, for good measure, she'd turn around and fuck Leonie so good that Leonie couldn't think about Marianne. It would be perfect. She'd have fun and not think about her feelings at all. 

The worst part was that everyone in the Golden Deer had had at least a few feelings for Marianne at some point. Lorenz was the most obvious about it. Lysithea had dealt with it by being mean, which was how she dealt with most of her feelings, so it didn't really count. Hilda could have been annoyed with _them._ She could have been pissy thinking about Marianne with Claude, for sure. Ignatz and Raphael, definitely. 

But Leonie? Leonie was so nice all the time, so humble, so hardworking, so determined to earn a place she already deserved, that Hilda couldn't be mad about it without feeling like an even more selfish person than she already was. 

Even as she thought this, Marianne rose up on her elbows, taking Hilda with her. Before Hilda realized what was happening, Marianne tipped her flat on her back and climbed on top of her, straddling her hips.

"I'm sorry… it's just nice to be the strong one for once!" Marianne said, with a grin that was downright goofy, by her standards. "You and Leonie are both so—"

Before Marianne could finish her sentence, Hilda grabbed one of her own tits, groping hard at it. She pinched and tugged at one of her nipples, a little cruelly, but they were big, and it took a lot of abuse before the sensation tipped over the line from pleasant to painful.

Marianne exhaled a startled _Oh_ , and shifted so that her legs were spread wider over Hilda.

"Did you play with my boobs last night?" Hilda asked. "Or did you just touch my pussy? Did you make yourself come?"

"Um… yes," Marianne replied.

"Yes what?" Hilda slid her other hand up Marianne's inner thigh. Her bare pussy was already wet against Hilda's slender, delicate fingers. Maybe Marianne had just never stopped being wet. Maybe she'd gotten turned on the moment Hilda entered the room. Hilda cupped Marianne between her legs and held her firmly there, grinding the heel of her palm hard against her clit, exactly the way Hilda knew her own body enjoyed it.

"Yes—all of it," said Marianne, bearing down into Hilda's touch without a single ounce of shame. 

From what Hilda had seen last night, Leonie would have already dragged Marianne up to let her sit on her face. Well, too bad: Hilda was going to make her wait. She knew how to keep her own body on edge. 

"I guess I should thank Coco," Hilda said, letting Marianne ride her palm. "If we'd never switched bodies, I'd never have just known how naughty you were. Here's my sweet Marianne, praying in the Cathedral every morning, singing in the choir every evening, getting fucked by a mercenary every night… who'd have thought, huh?"

Everything sounded ten times more obscene in Marianne's soft voice. That got a startled whimper out of Marianne. Dirty talk, check. Hilda watched her own face go slack with pleasure, and wow, she was even more attractive than she'd thought she was; anyone who slept with her was so lucky they got to see this. It was Marianne in there, though, moaning and giving herself over completely to Hilda's touch. 

"Were you thinking about me? The real thing's so much better, isn't it," Hilda said. 

Slowly, carefully, Marianne levered herself off of Hilda's hand. Her face was red, and settled her body over Hilda's, her thigh sliding between Hilda's legs. 

In Hilda's own body, this would have been pleasant but ignorable. In Marianne's body, the barest contact was like lightning. Hilda should have been prepared for this after rounds one through four with Leonie last night, but Marianne hitched her leg up a bit to press more firmly against her, and she moaned. 

"I want to make you feel good," Marianne said. She shifted and put a hand between Hilda's legs. "Is this really what I feel like down here... oh, goodness, you're so wet. I'm so wet? This is confusing...." 

She pressed a light kiss to Hilda's throat, which was also exquisitely, devastatingly sensitive.

Her mouth moved downward, to the place where Hilda's neck met her shoulder. It wasn't a place where Hilda was sensitive in her own body, but Marianne's mouth moved across her collarbone, peppering kisses along its graceful length, and a slow wave of surprise rolled through Hilda. Marianne had the terrain advantage here, too. She was good at this. How could she not be? She'd been fucking Leonie for years, and Leonie was incredible. 

Hilda's two images of Marianne—Marianne, bumbling and shy, Marianne, quiet and confident—had nothing to do with the Marianne who kissed and bit her way down Hilda's belly, looking up at Hilda with an animal gleam in her eyes. This third Marianne, a stranger, sniffed deeply at her own pussy and spread it wide, staring fixedly at her curls, her clit, her own hole. 

"Can I taste you?" Marianne asked. 

"H-Hey, it's your body," Hilda began, "I'm just along for the ride."

Marianne inclined her head, looking for all the world like this was a tea party and she'd been asked to pour out. She started with slow, careful licks, pausing once in a while when Hilda's squirming got too pronounced. She moved carefully, tracing the tip of her tongue around Hilda's clit, never touching it directly. 

Hilda was going to lose her mind. In Hilda's own body, she needed it hard and fast, and it took a long time; Balthus had to shove three fingers inside her and suck on her clit before she came. She'd thought she'd gotten used to his with Leonie last night, but apparently not, because it felt as amazing as the first time Leonie went down on her. She was going to miss having a cunt this sensitive when Coco changed them back. 

Hilda reached down to tangle a hand in her own hair, to make Marianne go faster.

Marianne removed Hilda's hand and pinned it to the bed without missing a beat. For a second Hilda forgot whose body was whose, and had a moment of consternation over Marianne being stronger than her; but Marianne pinned her other hand to the bed. She made a low, hungry noise in the back of her throat, and then finally, _finally_ put the flat of her tongue on Hilda's clit.

"Holy shit," Hilda said. "Keep doing that. How do you live like this? I'd sit on someone's face and never move again." 

Marianne's answer was a deep grumbling noise. She insinuated a hand between Hilda's legs and slid one finger inside her, just one. It wouldn't have satisfied Hilda in her own body, but Marianne's body didn't take a huge dick on a regular basis. Immediately, Hilda bore down on the finger. 

The ease with which Marianne played her own body, the wet noises she made as she ate her own pussy... if Hilda had just been a little less lazy over the past five years, if she'd visited Marianne, done more than write a letter every few months that talking about nothing but herself and her silly hobbies, this could have been all hers. 

Marianne added a second finger, and now she moved them, hooking them up a little to hit the spot in her pussy that no one had ever quite found in Hilda's own. 

Perfect timing: Hilda was sick of thinking. Hilda twisted beneath her, but Marianne held her fast, keeping that hand pinned to the bed.

And still, Marianne didn't press her tongue in any harder. She wasn't rough. She was implacable. With a frustrated whine, Hilda did her best to move her hips once more, willing Marianne to pick up the pace, to send Hilda over the edge. Just a little more, one last lick, another finger, _anything_. She was so close. 

Nothing. Marianne breathed hard against her in short, heavy gusts, and suddenly she shifted forward, putting her whole mouth on Hilda and sucking. Hilda shouted, then shoved her hand into her mouth to stifle her moans. The doors were thin. The monastery had a lot of empty space and only a few people still stayed in the dormitories, but any of them walking past could hear her. 

It felt important that she keep this private. Without skipping a beat, however, Marianne reached up and yanked her arm down, so that Hilda had no choice but to cry out to the ceiling in pleasure. 

The pressure inside her built and built, but did not break. Leonie had held Hilda on the edge like this last night too, but not for so long. Hilda felt ravenous, wild, and she wanted nothing more than to get out from beneath Marianne, roll them over, press her pussy into Marianne's—her own—mouth, but Marianne in her body could not be moved. 

That thought, her helplessness, and Marianne's tongue, set her over the edge. She shouted hoarsely and gave in to it, clenching hard around Marianne's fingers; and to her horror, she felt a heavy gush of liquid come out of her. Marianne didn't stop, did not even seem to register it, but fucked Hilda through her orgasm, directly into a second one, too, and probably would have kept going if Hilda hadn't pressed at the top of her head to shove her off. Too much, too much. 

Hilda lay against the pillows. She wriggled out of the wet spot she'd left on the sheets, and stared up at the ceiling, the windows, the drawings on the desk, anything to avoid looking Marianne in the eye.

Marianne sat up and dabbed genteelly at her wet face with the corner of Hilda's blanket, every inch the perfect lady. 

"Was it good?" Marianne asked. 

This snapped Hilda out of her trance. "No," she said, "I squirted all over your face because I was having a bad time." 

"I'm sorry," said Marianne. "I don't do that—I mean, my body doesn't do that—often, but when I do... it's quite a lot." 

"It was great," said Hilda. "You didn't let me make it up to you, though," Hilda said, nudging Marianne with her foot. 

"There's nothing to make up," Marianne said. "Really! You've been stuck in my body all day, it can't have been very enjoyable. If I'd been a little less gullible and asked Constance about the spell beforehand—I'm the one with the knowledge, we could have avoided this whole thing. It was the least I could do." 

"You can't possibly be this dense, Marianne."

Marianne's face fell.

" _I'm_ the one who dragged you down to Abyss because I thought it'd be funny to introduce you to Constance. I wasn't expecting the two of you to like each other, but I'm glad you did. It's like you don't need me anymore.

"Listen. You're so pretty. You have great hair. You have a cute butt, not that anyone ever sees it; please let me take you into town and buy you some pants. You're such a good mage. You're sleeping with someone who's wild about you and doesn't care about your name or your money. And I—" 

Marianne did that thing where she darted forward cut Hilda off with a kiss.

"You called me _your_ Marianne," Marianne said, when she broke from Hilda's mouth.

Had she? Yeah, she definitely had. 

"Sure," Hilda said, trying to sound casual. In Marianne's voice, the word had a brittle edge to it.

"You did it twice," Marianne said. 

"Okay, fine. What about it?" 

"Do you care for me?" 

If Marianne's hair hadn't been so nice, Hilda would have been tearing it out at the roots. "Yes!" Hilda said. "Obviously!"

"If, um, you'd like to join me and Leonie sometime... you'd be welcome. Leonie admires you. And these." She squeezed Hilda's breasts with both hands, pressing them together and looking down at them. "She admires these a lot. I think if we explained what happened, she'd be entertained by it." 

Something mean and ugly inside of Hilda unwound itself at that. 

It couldn't be this easy, but Marianne looked so earnestly at her, Hilda's own pink eyes wide and sincere, and Hilda could not help but believe what she said. On Marianne's actual face, the expression would have been just devastating. Marianne was going to be an absolute terror when she inherited her title. Hilda was extremely glad she was the useless spare and would never have to deal with being at the High Table between her, Claude, Lorenz, and Lysithea. 

"What about you? Do you, uh, admire me?" Hilda asked. Everyone admired Hilda's boobs, that part went without saying. She herself was staring at them now and admiring them. The Goddess had done good work. 

"Of course I do," Marianne said. "I always have. You always took my side when we were students and people said such terrible things about me, and you're so brave"—Hilda tried to protest, but Marianne cut her off—"and you've spent the past five years learning all kinds of skills. I've been hiding from the war and doing whatever Father told me to." 

"I don't know, you seem like you've learned one or two new things. "

Marianne looked confused, and then said, "Oh! You mean sex. Yes, I worked very hard and had a wonderful tutor, you understand." 

Hilda refused to believe that Marianne didn't have the same native genius for sex that she had for healing magic, but sometimes you just had to allow people to be humble. 

"I bet you'd learn a few new things from me and Balthus," Hilda said tentatively. "If you wanted to give it a go." 

Marianne nodded eagerly. "Yes, I'd enjoy that," she said.

Nothing but confidence there! And if Marianne felt confident about a thing, there had to be something in it. 

Hilda was still uneasy. This couldn't turn out well. It was too many people. It'd get messy. Hilda hated mess even more than she hated work: everything in her life was its own neat little drawer, and she liked it that way. Sister, spare, soldier, friend, lover: almost nothing overlapped. But when she cast about for the jealousy she'd felt, all she found in its place was the image of Marianne on Balthus's cock, her hand pressed to her belly and her eyes wide, stunned at how it stretched her out. Leonie bending Hilda over a desk while Marianne watched and touched herself. 

"Great," Hilda said. "I'm glad we got that settled. C'mon let's go to Coco and get this straightened out." 

"Ah... you said two days," Marianne said. She cupped Hilda's face, stroking a rough thumb—were Hilda's hands really that rough, or did Marianne just have amazing skin—down her cheek. "You're right, you should make me come, too. It seems like a better use of our time than trying to figure out Constance's error, don't you think? Before we switch back, I want to learn how your body works from the inside. " 

That was the hottest thing Hilda had heard in weeks. Hilda hadn't thought she'd be turned on again so soon, but there Marianne's body went, getting all stirred up. 

"Jeez, when you put it like that," Hilda said.

Let no one say Hilda Valentine Goneril didn't put in the effort where it counted. 

Marianne had likely only managed one orgasm last night, if she'd managed any at all. That was just sad. Hilda knew her body: she took a long time to come, but once she got started she came over and over and over, one orgasm rolling into the next. Getting her off practice, patience and skill, and no one in the world had devoted more time to Hilda's pleasure and enjoyment than Hilda herself. 

After the sixth orgasm, Hilda stopped counting, and by the seventh, she stopped caring who heard them at it. Marianne made such cute noises with Hilda's voice. She took everything Hilda gave her and asked for more. By the time Hilda started using healing magic to reset her body's refractory period—the only magic she cared enough to do, and so much easier in Marianne's body!—Marianne was beyond speech.

"Wow, maybe I should brush up on my magic," Hilda said when she was done. "That was _so_ much less work." 

"Please don't," said Marianne, rousing herself enough to close her legs. "It's—ah—incredibly difficult. All of magic. Especially healing magic. It's so hard. You have no idea. You'd hate it." 

"Good thing I've got two personal tutors, then! Baltie's not a genius like you, but he's not bad. _Three_ tutors, if I want to spend more time in Coco's workshop, which, actually, I don't think I want to do. Hey, speaking of which, do you feel like you've learned enough about my body?" 

Marianne groaned and rolled over onto her stomach. Hilda took the opportunity to squeeze her own butt, which was a work of art, and Marianne groaned for an entirely different reason. 

_Someone_ had to be responsible here. Marianne had said she had things to do today, and and Hilda had to do them, she supposed. She'd missed the meeting with the retainers for sure. That was Marianne's problem, not hers. 

"Okay, champ, let's go to the baths and get some breakfast," Hilda said.

Once more, Marianne groaned. 

Hilda hopped out of bed, leaving Marianne lying there. She caught sight of their reflections in the mirror, Marianne in Hilda's body sprawled out on the bed, Hilda in Marianne's body moving gracefully across the room. They looked good together. 

Hilda went through her drawers and picked a less terrible outfit for Marianne to wear today, a high-waisted skirt with a tight blouse, technically modest, still sexy, but not so sexy it would give Marianne the maidenly vapors. That was something good and useful to think about, something that was not the weird sex situation she'd found herself in. 

She threw her bathrobe over Marianne's back. 

"Pitter patter, up and at 'em," Hilda said, mussing Marianne's hair. It couldn't get much worse than it already was. "Mr. Leader Man's got a meeting on the schedule in an hour, and I just can't let you be late. Or you can't let me be late. Either way, my body hates me when I skip breakfast, Lorenz is going to come looking for you if we're not on time." 

At that, Marianne roused herself enough to wrap the robe around her. Hilda took the moment to admire her own tits, yet another thing that was better than thinking about whether she was going to ruin everything. 

"Thank you... this outfit looks nice. Oh! And you were wrong, you know," Marianne said suddenly. 

"Uh, about what?" 

Marianne seized Hilda's hand and gave her another one of those awful, sincere looks. "Before," she said. "You were wrong. I did like meeting Constance, even if it ended like this. I do have Leonie. But I still need you, Hilda. I always have." 

Marianne thought Hilda was brave _._ She thought Hilda was smart and clever. She was totally wrong, but now Hilda just couldn't disappoint her. 

"Yeah... I need you too, Marianne," Hilda said. "How about that? C'mon, we smell like we just had a lot of sex, let's go get clean." 

But she pulled Marianne in close and kissed her hands, which were Hilda's own: scarred from weapons practice, rough from all her apprenticeships over the years. Marianne giggled, and once again her presence in Hilda's body made it into something delicate, something sweet. Marianne believed in her, sincerely, wholeheartedly. Marianne _needed_ her. Hilda felt a third new emotion; she set it aside to examine later, and did not despise it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find your pal PD on Twitter at [@a_printersdevil](https://twitter.com/a_printersdevil).


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